BY PETER BENEDICT

OF THE SOCIETY OF JESUS

To the Most Eminent and Reverend Lord

LORD ANGELO MARIA

QUIRINI

Cardinal Librarian of the Holy Roman Church

On the New Edition of the Works of Saint EPHREM the Syrian

THE SECOND PREFACE.

A decorative square woodcut initial 'Q' depicts a youthful figure, perhaps an angel or a young saint, seated and gazing upward in contemplation or prayer.
What I hardly dared to hope for, I now present to you: the second volume of the Great Ephrem, begun six years ago under your auspices, Most Eminent Prince, and now completed. For it was fitting that, since I undertook the work at your suggestion, I should return the finished work to you. You have here another monument of my respect for you, as well as an immortal witness to your merits toward the Church and the Republic of Letters The "Republic of Letters" (Latin: Respublica literaria) was the long-distance intellectual community of scholars in the 17th and 18th centuries who shared ideas through letters and published works.. Time eventually consumes marbles and metals, but no day shall ever erase the labors of Saint Ephrem; they shall remain forever, and as long as they remain, they will share their immortality with you. Nor will it be merely that kind of immortality produced by the industry of the engraver A reference to the physical process of printing and bookmaking., which falls to the deserving and undeserving alike, but that truly divine immortality gained through a beneficence most like the divine; this is the reward of illustrious men who have served the human commonwealth most excellently—

—served. The judgment passed in previous years by the French Clergy regarding the preparation of this new edition of Saint Ephrem testifies that hardly anything else of this kind could have been provided for the Church of Christ from which greater dignity might accrue to it among its own, or a firmer defense against heterodox In this context, "heterodox" refers to those whose religious beliefs differed from the official Roman Catholic doctrines of the time. views, or a sharper stimulus to pursue good undertakings for those whom a distaste for ignorance and laziness has driven to the study of letters, whether among the orthodox or the heterodox. Thus, in his writings, those two pursuits of the most honorable pleasure flow together: the beautiful and the good. These are two incentives provided for us by divine providence for useful labors, without which we could neither defend nor adorn the dignity of our nature, by which we excel all other creatures.

Saint Thomas Likely referring to the teachings of Saint Thomas Aquinas on the nature of pleasure and the soul.
Pleasure follows every movement of the soul, but above all, the movement of admiration delights us—a movement that is usually directed toward grand and beautiful things. Such things are also pleasant, both from the present knowledge they offer and from the future knowledge they promise...